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March 31, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 13

In ‘Fight for 15’ win, N.Y.U. will boost pay for student workers BY YANNIC RACK

tudent workers at New York University will soon make $15 an hour, after the school’s new president announced he would raise their minimum wage over the next three years, ending a yearlong campaign by activists who demanded better pay at the

country’s third-most expensive college. Andrew Hamilton, who took over the reins at the school in January, wrote in a memo to students and faculty last week that the pay raise would be implemented starting this year. “The topic that recurs most FIGHT FOR 15 continued on p. 8

Hoylman not ‘down’ with no-permit pillow fight in Wash. Sq. Pk. BY COLIN MIXSON

eathers are flying over Washington Square Park, and the pillow fight hasn’t even started. State Senator Brad Hoylman and a slew of other elected officials fired off letters to the promoters of an annual pillow fight, calling for the cancelation of the im-

pending downy donnybrook at Washington Square Park on Sat., April 2, due to a lack of permits — permits that the pillow fight planners readily admit to having never applied for. However, the pillow fight promoters say they’ve been putting on the event for a dePILLOWS continued on p. 24

PHOTO BY MILO HESS

There was no masking the fact that this guy took pride in his elaborate Easter getup at the Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on Fifth Ave. in Midtown on Sunday.

One year later: Rising from a tragedy’s ashes BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES

o mark the one-year anniversary of the catastrophic gas explosion that killed two men and ignited a raging inferno that destroyed three East Village tenements, Councilmember Rosie Mendez and other local politicians and agency officials on Saturday held a “Day of Remembrance” press conference outside the tragic site. Reverend Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle

Collegiate Church, gave the opening remarks and led the crowd in a moment of silence for the two victims, Moises Locón, 27, and Nicholas Figueroa, 23. In addition to individuals who were displaced after the calamity, also on hand were firefighters and other first responders — including Ladder Company 9, Engine Company 3 and local volunteer Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, team members — who rushed to the scene of the disaster one year ago.

“We can never forget the tragedies that were avoidable, and we vow to work to ensure that no one else has to suffer and endure what the families and our communities have,” Mendez said. Mendez said that many of the affected former tenants still remain homeless. “We hope they can find the place they need to continue on the path toward healing,” she said. In total, 30 families were displaced and six families EXPLOSION continued on p. 6

Triangle memorial becomes a wedge issue...page 13 Bob Adelman, 85, civil rights photographer..page 14 Be a fool for April arts..................page 19

www.TheVillager.com

to play is still the way business is conducted.” Honestly, we don’t think we’ve seen one press release from Cancel. “We are doing real grassroots [campaigning],” Quinn said. “I do what I can. Pedro [Cardi] handles literature and what he can. Monica [Guardiolia] does scheduling. My biggest job is to take care of Alice. She has tremendous support in the community. Also Rosie is a godsend,” he said of Councilmember Rosie Mendez, who has endorsed Cancel.

POLE CAT: After last Saturday’s Day of Remembrance press conference for the Second Ave. explosion and its victims, we were admiring Jim Power’s new “fire pole” at the northwest corner of E. Seventh St. and Second Ave., at right, just outside the barren blast site. The base of the pole’s east side is inscribed with “Explosion” and “Great Fire.” Showing the “Mosaic Man” ’s craftsmanship and attention to detail is a small tile with a cat and the words “For a cat lover.” While many of the lost “catastrophe cats” were found after the explosion, a few of the felines are sadly still missing a year later. Power told us he was recently working on the pole when legendary singer Graham Nash and his girlfriend came walking by. Nash’s girlfriend admired it so much that before they left — telling Power to “carry on” — she gave him $100. SCHWARTZ FUNDRAISING: A rumor is going around that Village District Leader Arthur Schwartz is self-financing his upstart campaign against Assemblymember Deborah Glick. Not true, Schwartz told us. “I donated $20,000 to my campaign at the start,” he said. “I expect to raise the rest. I hope to raise $100,000. Jerry Delakas gave me $2,000!” he said, referring to the beloved Astor Place news vendor, who Schwartz championed, helping Delakas to retain his newsstand against the city’s efforts to shut him down. “The rumor is from someone who thinks I have piles of money lying around,” Schwartz said. “I had to reinvest most of the proceeds from the sale of my house to get out of a massive capital-gains tax bill. I still paid over $1 million. And I bought a new place to live without a mortgage, and did renovations — dug out

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A SIMPLE MISTAKE: Speaking of endorsements, Quinn recently found himself in hot water after the New York Observer reported that, in filling out an endorsement questionnaire from the 504 Democrats, whose members have physical disabilities, Quinn had listed a slew of politicians whom he claimed backed her candidacy, but who, in fact, have not weighed in on the race. Quinn wrote down that Cancel was being supported by Congressmembers Nydia Velazquez, Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, state Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilmember Margaret Chin, in addition to Mendez, under “key endorsements.” The Observer checked with all the pols, and it turned out only Mendez is actually publicly supporting Cancel. In his defense, Quinn said he simply misread the form and thought it was asking who Cancel supports. PHOTO BY SCOOPY

the cellar, took off lead paint, put in a new boiler, etc. Not much left. My investments will benefit my children.”

WEB OF INTRIGUE? It turns out that Alice Cancel does, in fact, have a Web site. The New York Post had reported that Cancel — the Democratic nominee in the April 19 special election to fill Shelly Silver’s former Assembly seat — did not have one. However, her husband and campaign manager, State Committeeman John Quinn, said the Web site went up about a month ago. “Yuh-Line’s people stole a couple of domain names,” he charged. “A friend of ours who is good at this set it up.” Quinn was referring to Yuh-Line Niou, who is also running in the special election under the Working Families Party line. In addition, responding to the rumblings that Cancel “has been in hiding,” Quinn said, she had to scale back her campaigning because she had a flareup of her type 1 diabetes. “She wasn’t eating,” he said. “She has to be careful what she eats.” Asked if Cancel could cope with the stress of being a state legislator, Quinn said, “Believe me, Alice can handle it!” As for why he was incommunicado himself for a while there, Quinn told us, “I was kind of under the weather myself.” Meanwhile, Niou, especially, Republican Lester Chang and Green candidate Dennis Levy have been sending out online press releases. Niou recently blasted the city’s lifting of the deed restriction on the former AIDS residence on Rivington St. to allow it to be redeveloped as market-rate housing. Chang, among other things, has strongly called for keeping admissions tests for the city’s specialized high schools. Levy, in a press release this week, called for “another Moreland Commission to investigate New York’s multimillion-dollar medical marijuana program.” The commission, he said, would look at relationships between Albany politicians, lobbyists, medical marijuana company executives and New York’s Department of Health. “I believe the investigation will reveal the same type of corruption the Moreland Commission found in Albany,” pot-legalization advocate Levy said. “Pay

SPECIAL-ELECTION SPECIALS: In other Assembly special election scuttlebutt, we hear from a reliable local political source that the Working Families Party was actually set to give its ballot line to District Leader Paul Newell, but that at the last minute, Niou’s Assembly supporters “put the arm on” the party and swung it over to her. Newell is not running in the special election, but will be a candidate in the September open primary election. Also, Quinn said it’s true what people are saying — that Judy Rapfogel, Silver’s longtime chief of staff, was poised possibly to throw her support to Niou in the February County Committee vote, but that two hours before the vote, flipped to Cancel after it was determined Niou ultimately “didn’t have the votes” to win the nomination. That meant Rapfogel’s fellow Truman Democratic Club members, for the most part, followed suit and backed Cancel. Meanwhile, Quinn said Niou’s strategy of slamming Silver doesn’t jibe with the long-held position of her political patron, Virginia Kee, president emeritus of Chinatown’s United Democratic Organization. “They’re trying to brand Alice as the pick of Shelly,” Quinn said. “There is nobody that has been closer to Shelly than Virginia. Alice was out there speaking for SPURA,” he said, referring to the redevelopment of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, which Silver blocked for decades. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, “Shelly’s not picking anyone.” CANDIDATES FORUM: On Thurs., April 7, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Village Independent Democrats, Downtown Independent Democrats, Village Reform Democratic Club and Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club will sponsor a forum for candidates for the state Assembly, state Senate and the Democratic State Committee. The event will be held at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square (entrance at 243 Thompson St.). Candidates who plan to attend, as of now, include, for the 66th Assembly District, Deborah Glick and Arthur Schwartz; for the 27th state Senate District, Brad Hoylman; for the 26th state Senate District, Daniel Squadron; and for State Committee for the 66th A.D., Rachel Lavine. TheVillager.com

Feeling in the pink in the Village at springtime

Spring showers sprinkled the magnolias blooming in Washington Square Park. It’s still a bit chilly outside, but don’t try telling that to the flowers.

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

HealtH Profile

Let’s Talk About Colon Cancer By Joan CulpepperMorgan, MD

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, a reminder to all New Yorkers that the risk of colon cancer can be greatly reduced by getting a colonoscopy. In New York City, according to the New York Citywide Colon Cancer Control Coalition (C5), which includes the NYC Health + Hospitals, colorectal cancer is the second deadliest cancer, killing approximately 1,400 people each year. If caught early, ninety percent of colorectal cancers are curable. It’s no surprise to me people don’t want to talk about colon cancer or worse, colonoscopies. However, as the Chief of Gastroenterology, I’ve seen first-hand how colonoscopies save lives. So we must talk about it. I strongly urge all New Yorkers 50 and older to get a colonoscopy once every 10 years. Those with a family TheVillager.com

history of colorectal cancer should discuss with their physician whether they should be screened earlier. I’m glad to say colon cancer awareness and the work of the C5 coalition in NYC has helped to close the disparity in colon cancer screening rates that exists in most other parts of the country among blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics. In New York City, the colonoscopy screening rate is now the same across ethnic groups, this is great news! Just last year Manhattan hospitals in our health care system performed more than 6,000 colonoscopies. While this is great for our borough, there are plenty of people who have not yet had this vital screening. Patients need to understand the factors related to lifestyle that may put them at higher risk, such as obesity, smoking, lack of physical ac-

tivity and heavy alcohol use. It’s also important to remember people with colon cancer often have no symptoms until the disease has reached advanced stages, and by the time people experience symptoms, treatment can be difficult or ineffective. Signs of colon cancer may include: • A change in bowel habits, including diarrhea, constipation or a change in consistency of stool • Rectal bleeding or blood in stool • Persistent abdominal discomfort, such as cramps, gas or pain • A feeling that the bowel does not completely empty after a bowel movement • Weakness or fatigue • Unexplained weight loss If you are 50 or over, or have family history of colorectal cancer, I urge you to talk to your doctor, and reduce your risk of colon cancer

Joan Culpepper-Morgan, M.D., FACG, Chief of Gastroenterology, NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem by going for a colonoscopy. NYC Health + Hospitals provides affordable colorectal cancer screenings across

New York City. Visit www. nychealthandhospitals.org or call 311 to locate a NYC Health + Hospitals location near you. March 31, 2016

Named best weekly newspaper in New York State in 2001, 2004 and 2005 by New York Press Association Editorials, First Place, 2014 News Story, First Place, 2014 Overall Design Excellence, First Place, 2013 Best Column, First Place, 2012 Photographic Excellence, First Place, 2011 Spot News Coverage, First Place, 2010 Coverage of Environment, First Place, 2009

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Councilmember Corey Johnson is once again offering voters the chance to do participatory budgeting on a range of projects in his District 3.

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Participate in participatory budgeting! BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

f you could allocate the budget for City Council District 3, what would your priorities be? Well, now you have a chance to weigh in on how you would spend at least a portion of that funding — in the district’s second annual round of participatory budgeting. Between Sat., March 26, and Sun., April 3, residents of District 3 — which is represented by Councilmember Corey Johnson and covers the Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen — can vote on a range of projects, from parks and education to arts and transit. Any district resident who is at least 14 years old can vote. There are 15 projects in all, and individuals are allowed to select up to five. People can vote, for example, for a

green roof at the new 75 Morton St. middle school for $200,000. Also on the “ballot” is the renovation of the historic field house at Downing St. Playground, at Sixth Ave. and Downing St., for $250,000. Other choices include real-time bus-arrival information at five key bus stops around the district, or new street trees throughout District 3 — both for $100,000. Voters can also back the renovation of the basketball court at Gertrude Kelly Playground, at W. 17th St. between Eighth and Ninth Aves., for $350,000. Other items include a range of park, school and other improvement projects north of W. 14th St. Residents can vote at any one of seven “poll sites”; however, the sites are open

on varying days, so be sure to check the schedule first. This year, there will also be a pilot program for online voting. If you are unable to make it to the polls and want to vote online, call 212-564-7757 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., or send an e-mail to district3@council.nyc.gov. Johnson’s office will register you, then send you a form for voting. You can also register in person at a poll site to vote online. Johnson’s office will verify online voters’ residency in the district through their own office database of district constituents and other means. “We’re not worried about widespread P.B. voter fraud,” said Erik Botcher, Johnson’s chief of staff. “Even when you vote in person, if you don’t have ID, you can sign an affidavit.”

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March 31, 2016

There are seven different places residents can vote. This year, online voting is also an option. TheVillager.com

City lifts stop-work orders against Extell tower BY LESLEY SUSSMAN

epresentatives from Extell Development Corporation — which is constructing the massive 80-story One Manhattan Square condo tower at 250 South St. — and its Lend Lease management company recently appeared before a Community Board 3 subcommittee and announced that sales will go online for domestic buyers beginning in September. The tower, with 815 proposed condo units, being developed on the former South St. Pathmark site, has, so far, been mainly marketed abroad, most notably in Asia. An additional 205-unit, 13-story affordable housing building to be located alongside the tower is slated for mid2018 completion. The project has come under sharp attack from nearby residents who have bitterly complained that the new Extell building is wrecking the neighborhood in many ways, from construction noise and structural damage to their dwellings to fears that the project may result in the gentrification of the neighborhood and force low-to-moderate-income residents to leave because of rising rents. At the Wed., March 9, meeting of C.B. 3’s Land Use, Zoning, Public and Private Housing Subcommittee, Ex-

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tell representatives heard a plea from Trever Holland, president of the tenants association at the nearby 82 Rutgers Slip, that they be given more upto-date information about goings-on at the construction site. “We need better communication between the owners and our tenant association,” he said. “A lot of stuff goes on that we don’t hear about. Please keep us informed. If there’s some kind of survey in our building, we don’t want our tenants to panic. We want to know what it’s all about and be able to reassure them.” Rainy Haas, Extell’s senior vice president for development, responded that George Arzt, the company’s P.R. spokesperson, would serve as a special liaison to the association. “He will make himself available to the tenant association and handle any requests or problems,” she said. Holland seemed satisfied by the reply. He said Extell, so far, had been “responsive to almost all our concerns.” Regarding cracks and other damage to apartments in his building from vibrations, Holland said he felt Extell would uphold its word to repair any such damage. “I’m confident all apartments will be repaired,” he said. “Most of the damage is just cracks in the walls and not very serious.” Haas and construction manager

Sharon Stern gave an update on the project. Hass added that a full stopwork order from the city has been lifted, and that a remaining partial stopwork order was expected to be lifted in “a few days.” “Work has been going on smoothly except in the limited area where the temporary work stoppage order is in effect,” she said. The partial stopwork, in fact, was lifted March 15. The stoppages were ordered by the Department of Buildings on Feb. 18 after inspectors found “immediately hazardous conditions” in the con-

struction area. The action stemmed from a Jan. 7 complaint made by a resident of 286 South St., who said the construction was causing cracks in her walls. When D.O.B. investigated a week later, the agency issued a stop-work order after inspectors observed that the construction was creating movement at this and other adjoining buildings. Work did not stop, however, according to a second complaint filed on Feb. 17, so D.O.B. slapped another violation on Extell and Lend Lease, along with a second partial stop-work order. A creative menu brought to you by Chef Franco Barrio with locally sourced produce serving New York style food in the heart of the West Village.

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One year later, rising from a tragedy’s ashes; EXPLOSION continued from p. 1

have since moved out of state. On that fateful day, Mildred Guy lost her home of 45 years at 119 Second Ave., which collapsed along with 121 and 123 Second Ave. At the press conference, Guy tearfully recalled the shock of learning her family’s home — which her kids fondly knew as “Mommy’s Place” — was gone. She had lived there for most of her life in a multigenerational household. Yet, Guy said, she also felt grateful that her elderly mother, who was wheelchair bound, had passed away before the explosion happened, and that her grandson was not asleep inside the apartment, since her son had moved out with his family only shortly before the blast. “I feel grateful and blessed,” Guy said. “So many people opened their arms, offered prayers, support and their homes.” “The empty lots behind me where three buildings once stood are a constant reminder of a fatal incident that could have been prevented,” Mendez said. “What appears to me to be a blatant disregard for human life was led by greed and brought a heightened awareness to the city of individuals putting the well-being of others in jeopardy.” This February, Maria Hrynenko, 56, who owns 121 Second Ave. where the blast occurred, her son Michael Hrynenko, 30, contractor Dilber Kukic, 40, and plumber Athanasios “Jerry” Ioannidis, 59, were all charged with criminally negligent homicide and assault in the second degree in connection with the gas explosion. In addition, Andrew Trombettas, 57, was charged with “renting” his master plumbing license to Ioannidis, so the latter could get work on the property approved, prosecutors said. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said the defendants set up an elaborate illegal gas line and hid the setup from inspectors, causing the explosion and subsequent fire. The court case was set to resume on Thurs., March 31. On March 26, 2015, Michael Hryenko and Kukic ran out of 121 Second Ave. when the basement filled with gas, never warning building residents or patrons at Sushi Park, where Figueroa was paying his bill and Locón worked as a busboy. The City Council introduced nine bills last month that, among other things, would increase inspections of gas pipe systems, require better and more informative notifications to tenants about gas-related issues, increase transparency about the cause of gas-related violations and mandate natural-gas alarms in resi-

March 31, 2016

PHOTO BY PATRICK J. EVES

Mildred Guy, right, a displaced tenant from the former 119 Second Ave., spoke about the apartment her family called “Mommy’s Home,” as from left, Councilmember Rosie Mendez and Public Advocate Letitia James listened.

PHOTO BY PATRICK J. EVES

Tenants from 57 Second Ave. who are part of the Icon Community Unit were heartened to hear the politicians say landlords won’t be allowed to put profits above people’s safety. The tenants say their landlord, Icon Realty Management, is hell-bent on maximizing profit in their buildings.

dential units. Mendez is the lead sponsor of Intro. 1093, which would require gas providers to notify the Department of Buildings of a gas service shutoff within 24 hours. “The city of New York is committed to preventing tragedies like this from happening again,” Mendez said. A hearing on the bills is set for June. “It sends a message to building owners who might be tempted to cut corners and find justice and is another step forward toward healing and closure that our neighbors need,” Mendez said. “One year ago, we lost two innocent individuals due to greed and

poor safety oversight,” said Assemblymember Deborah Glick. “This tragedy is a reminder that the pursuit of profits over people too often jeopardizes the safety of all New Yorkers.” State Senator Brad Hoylman said the community still has a long way to go, and that part of the redress of justice is ensuring that none of the property owners involved see any profit from the future sale of the now-vacant properties. He added that part of the problem is that LLCs that are, in fact, “shell corporations,” need to be exposed to civil suits tied to litigation. “You know how impressive a community is, how successful a community is when it comes together like it did one year ago,” Hoylman added.

Also speaking at the press conference were Public Advocate Letitia James; Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer; Damaris Reyes, chairperson of LES Ready and director at GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side); Gigi Li, chairperson of Community Board 3; and Tyesha Maddox, another displaced tenant, who had to vacate her apartment in the adjacent building at 125 Second Ave. Guy said it’s still difficult to walk past the empty lot where her building once stood. “It’s sad,” she said. “This was my home for 45 years.” For a while after the explosion, Guy would walk home toward her old building on Second Ave. after work. “It took me awhile to realize that this is not my home anymore,” she said. She is now living temporarily on E. Fourth St., thanks to the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. And she is still working at the Neighborhood School on E. Third St., where she is a veteran of 20 years. Guy would like to see modestly sized affordable housing go up on the vacant lot, not market-rate condos. In the meantime, all she wants is to find a new place to call home permanently. “I want to be able to find an affordable apartment again where my family can come and visit,” she said, “like Mommy’s Place.” Later that afternoon, family members of the two men in their 20s who died in the disaster returned to the fenced-off lot for a memorial service for them. Joining them were local residents, business owners and anyone else who wanted to show support. Those in attendance were asked to write words of remembrance for Moises Locón and Nicholas Figueroa on small white paper bags. Inside each bag, a candle was placed, and then each bag was laid down on the rubble-strewn ground in the center of the vacant site, forming a glowing white cross in remembrance of the two men. Reverend Jacqui Lewis of Middle Collegiate Church returned to lead the vigil — along with Figueroa’s parents and Locón’s brothers — reading scripture and leading the crowd in singing “Amazing Grace.” In tears, Moises’ brother Alfredo, with his brother Zacharias beside him, shared his heartfelt remembrances about their lost sibling. Barely able to get her words out, Ana Figueroa spoke about her son. “When a child dies, a parent loses a part of themselves and a part of their being, becoming a shell of a person they once were,” she said. “Death EXPLOSION continued on p. 7 TheVillager.com

Politicians warn not to put profits over people EXPLOSION continued from p. 6

leaves a heartache no one can heal, but love leaves memories that no one can touch.” Before the vigil, The Villager spoke with Nicholas’s father, Nixon, who said that the day his son died, he died, too. He missed his father-toson talks with Nicholas and his smile and laughter, he said. The first firefighter up the building’s fire escape that day later cut one of the fire-escape ladders down to make two crosses with a base with the initials of Nicholas’s and Moises’ names. “It’s a piece of history,” Nicholas’s father said, as he gripped the two small iron crosses in his hands. “It’s something to keep the memories of my son and Moises. “Unfortunately we have to be here for this,” he said. “I wish it was me that day. If I had a sense that he was in here, I would have went into the building and died myself.” One year later, Figueroa’s parents still come down from the Upper East Side every Thursday to keep up the makeshift memorial to their son and Moises that festoons the gates around the fenced-in lot. Moises’ brothers regularly give them new photos to share for the memorial. “Sometimes death has to happen to get things done,” Figueroa reflected. “Hopefully, this never happens again.” For local residents, the disaster’s

PHOTO BY PATRICK J. EVES

The first firefighter that went up the fire escape at 121 Second Ave. on March 26, 2015, later used part of the fire-escape ladder to make commemorative crosses for the families of both victims. A friend of Nicholas Figueroa’s held his cross, with the soldered initials “NF” and a candle cup for the vigil. TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY PATRICK J. EVES

Alfredo Locón, a brother of Moises Locón, one of the Second Ave. disaster’s victims, spoke emotionally at Saturday’s memorial service, as Reverend Jacqui Lewis held the microphone and his brother Zacharias stood beside him. At left are the parents of the other victim, Nicholas Figueroa.

one-year anniversary brought jarring memories flooding back of the tumultuous day that literally rocked the East Village. Shep Wahnon moved to the neigborhood — just a block away from the explosion site — in 1981. He remembered hearing the explosion last March, and how everything then changed. “It’s very sad,” he said. “You have this vacant spot. But restaurants and businesses were here, buildings with homes and people and a cat. All that is gone. It’s hard to believe. Memories are lost and what’s left behind is this big open sore that everyone sees when they pass by.” Steve Herrick, executive director of Cooper Square Committee, said of the explosion, “It tore a hole in the heart of the East Village.” Alex Gross, who lives nearby and moved to the neighborhood in 1959, didn’t want to come out to the oneyear anniversary but felt he needed to be there with his community. “I didn’t want to come today,” he admitted. “I’m touched by it and realized that I had to. It doesn’t look that doleful or sad.” For sometime, Whanon would walk around the site to avoid seeing it. On the anniversary, he was slowly making his way around the fence, looking at photos of Lócon and Figueroa. “It was because of the negligent landlord and could have been avoided,” he said. “I don’t know where the chain of command was but someone should have done something. Any one of these things can happen any day, anywhere in the city.” William Goodhart, also known as The Street Teacher, has been giving

PHOTO BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES

A rose hung on the fence for the two young lives lost in the explosion.

tours of the East Village for 20 years. He related the Second Ave. explosion to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which killed 146 garment workers on March 25, 1911. “I was thinking about this the other day, because it was the anniversary of the Triangle Fire,” he said. “How have we not caught up with all of this by now? This makes you wonder — it’s not just one building or these three buildings.” Jean Standish, vice chairperson of the Bowery Alliance of Neigh-

bors, vividly remembers the day last March when everything changed. “I heard the explosion,” she said. “All emergency personnel were there and the Bomb Squad. I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk, blood coming from his head. It was a senseless thing.” Whanon, like most residents, would like to see some type of memorial go up in the now-vacant lot. Standish, who has lived in the area since the 1960s, would be happy if a park filled the spot where the three buildings once stood. “I love that people are still putting things up on the fence,” she said. “I’d love to see a memorial park with benches, a place where people can go… . “I still love this neighborhood,” she said. “I didn’t realize how lucky I was when I first moved here.” It’s a last-ditch effort for Stuart Lipsky. When he heard the explosion a year ago, he rushed to his building at 125 Second Ave. Within 10 minutes, Lipsky, a retired New York City science teacher, made it up to his apartment and grabbed one of his cats, but could not find the other — when his windows suddenly blew in. He wasn’t sure if his building would come down around him. Luckily, it survived. A tenant at No. 125 for nearly four decades, Lipsky last Saturday was still putting up missing posters for his cat, Ryce — who would have turned one this April 15 — in a final attempt to be reunited with his missing pet. “It’s not an anniversary I’m looking forward to,” Lipsky said before the press conference. “I’ve been there 37 years and didn’t need this.” Most tenants in his building were reunited with their pets following the explosion. But Ryce, a Lynx Point Siamese cat, has never been found. “The empty site I can deal with if my family was complete,” he said. “My wife and my daughter and I survived, and one of the cats. I feel guilty because when the windows started crashing in…we had to evacuate, I grabbed the one cat but not the other and regret it every day.” Everything happened so fast, but Lipsky clearly remembers seeing Pommes Frites, the Belgian fries place, on fire and hearing smoke detectors going off everywhere. “All of a sudden normal turned into not-so-normal,” he said. “I didn’t think I had a few more minutes, I thought for sure this building was going to come down.” The building didn’t come down, but his life — and the lives of so many others who were affected — was changed forever. “Every time I wake up,” he said, “I check the locks, the smoke detector, make sure my daughter is O.K.” March 31, 2016

N.Y.U. student workers to get $15 an hour by ’18 FIGHT FOR 15 continued from p. 1

often in my meetings with students is affordability,” Hamilton wrote on Thurs., Mar. 24. “As I have listened to students in various settings, I have repeatedly heard that raising the minimum hourly rate we pay to student workers is an important way to reduce the burden on families and to ease the pressure that students sometimes feel, even when they are getting generous scholarship aid.” The increase will be incremental, with a new minimum hourly rate of $12 for 2016-17, a minimum of $13.50 for 2017-18, and a final raise to $15 an hour for 2018-19, according to the university. The announcement, which comes as Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing for a $15 minimum wage across New York State and the “Fight for 15” movement is gaining momentum nationwide, was followed by Columbia University announcing its own wage increase less than a week later. Students at N.Y.U., who say they were previously paid as little as $9 an hour, praised the school’s move but remained skeptical about their new leader’s intentions. “It’s the result of a long student-led campaign on campus, and so we’re very excited that N.Y.U. is taking this step forward,” said Katie Shane, a junior and a member of the countrywide Student Labor Action Movement, or SLAM. “But it’s still up in the air whether this is a trend or just a one-time decision,” she added. Hamilton, who spent the last six years as vice chancellor of Oxford University, succeeded John Sexton, whose billion-dollar “N.Y.U. 2031” expansion plan in Greenwich Village alienated large groups of local residents and faculty members before his 13-year tenure ended last year. Despite scoring points for the minimum-wage announcement, Shane said that other issues around fair education at the school remain under Hamilton. She was one of a few dozen students who took part in a 30-hour occupation of the university’s Kimmel Center last weekend, for example, in a protest over N.Y.U.’s continued use of “the box” — which formerly incarcerated applicants must check — on its school applications. SLAM organizers praised the minimum-wage announcement last week, saying the move would make the university the first private school in the group’s network to raise all workers’ minimum hourly pay to $15 across campus — but they have even more to celebrate this week, after Columbia announced it would follow suit. The school’s provost told students in an e-mail on Monday that the university “will be raising the pay rate of

March 31, 2016

N.Y.U. undergraduate Hannah Fullerton, who is a student worker at the university, said the pay raise will “help put a dent” in her college loans.

Despite the “Fight for 15” victory, N.Y.U. student activists say there are still other pressing issues to address on campus, such as getting the school to remove “the box” from its college applications. The activists say criminal-history checkboxes create barriers to higher education for otherwise qualified applicants.

all part-time hourly student workers to $15 per hour over the next three years” — leading some N.Y.U. students to speculate on the impact of Hamilton’s announcement and their own campaigning. “It sort of shows the infective aspect

of this Fight for 15 movement going on across the country, and across the state particularly,” said Drew Weber, another SLAM member and N.Y.U. junior, after learning about the news. “There’s been a lot of pressure from us and from the state, and I think the

two sort of fed into each other to bring us here,” he said. A minimum-wage campaign at Columbia, led by a group called Student-Worker Solidarity, is linked to SLAM, and the organization noted that similar efforts are currently also underway at Macalester College, as well as public universities, including the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students at N.Y.U., whose debt after graduation runs about $35,000 on average — but can go much higher — are hopeful the raise will have a big impact. “As a student worker, $15 isn’t just a rhetorical number for me,” said Hannah Fullerton, another student at the university. “I’m set to graduate with $80,000 in student-loan debt. In the past, it’s been nearly impossible to work enough hours to earn my entire work-study award. This will put a dent in my living expenses, and in the debt I’m already accruing.” When adding up average tuition and fees, plus room and board, it costs more than $65,000 a year to attend the school. Hamilton emphasized that the university already saw the lowest increase in attendance costs in 20 years for the next academic year, which is set to see a 2 percent hike, and that a steering committee is looking at “additional ways beyond that first step to reduce the cost of N.Y.U. education for students and their families.” The N.Y.U. president also said the pay raise would especially benefit those students that already rely on financial assistance through the university’s work-study program, a mix of financial aid and compensation. “Work-study is another important way that students help pay for college,” Hamilton wrote, “and also pay for the experiences that accompany a college education: sharing a meal out with friends, attending the cultural events for which New York is duly famous, or simply addressing the myriad expenses that come with being on one’s own at college.” All of N.Y.U.’s full-time employees and graduate student workers, as well as full-time employees of on-campus vendors, already receive at least $15 per hour, according to the university. The move also comes as Governor Cuomo aims to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour statewide — and Hamilton emphasized that he would stick by his plan no matter what lawmakers in Albany decide. “Even if there is no agreement on this issue, or if the agreement calls for a longer time frame, N.Y.U. will move forward with its plans,” he said. “And, of course, should state legislation call for a quicker time frame, we will comply with that.” TheVillager.com

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A boozy Hornblower cruise filled with reputed gang members ended with some of them blasting bullets into a Nissan Maxima on Bethune St. on March 28, according to police. The New York Post reported, “Drunken gang members leaving a post-auto-show party boat caused mayhem in the West Village early Monday — shooting up a car and getting into fights throughout the quiet neighborhood, according to law-enforcement sources. “The hours after the annual New York Auto Show have been times of gang-initiation violence in busy areas like Times Square on Easter Sundays in recent years,” the report added. Police found the abandoned sedan full of bullet holes. The violence erupted around 2:45 a.m., not long after a Hornblower Cruises ship docked at Pier 40. Cops reportedly canvassed the area and local hospitals, but did not find any blood or victims. According to sources, the Post reported, the boat had been full of intoxicated gang members conducting initiations, and there apparently had

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Story doesn’t cut it At the northeast corner of Sixth Ave. and W. Fourth St. on Thurs., March 24, a police officer observed a shiny knife clip on the right front pocket of a man’s jeans around 10:30 p.m. The man attempted to walk away from the cop, who stopped him and recovered the knife. The man told police, “I live in Brooklyn. I come home late. I carry a knife every day and maybe use it for protection.” Lingqiu Jin, 23, was arrested for misdemeanor obstruction of governmental administration and criminal possession of a weapon.

Instagrab An altercation ensued at the W. Ninth St. PATH station Sun., March 27, around 2 a.m., when a young man and his girlfriend were taking a video with the boyfriend’s cell phone and another man approached and swiped it from the boyfriend’s hand, police said. The girlfriend at-

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tempted to retrieve the phone and then engaged in a struggle with a second man who was assisting the guy who intitially had grabbed away the phone from her boyfriend. Police said that when the men were arrested, they said, “It’s a prank.” Police busted Isaiah Johnson, 19, and Prince Bradley, 19, for felony robbery.

Maserati misery A police officer said he observed a white Maserati with Florida license plates blow through a stop sign in the Meatpacking District on Fri., March 25, around 1 a.m. The officer pulled the driver over at the corner of W. 14th St. and Ninth Ave. According to the report, the officer observed the driver to have a flushed face, a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and watery and bloodshot eyes, and was unsteady on his feet. Sohrab Sharma, 24, was arrested for misdemeanor D.W.I.

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cet inside a woman’s apartment at 225 Sullivan St. on Thurs., March 24, at 4 p.m., according to police. However, he was observed on a surveillance camera entering an unlocked bedroom and rummaging through drawers where she keeps her undergarments. When the victim returned to the scene, a credit card and MetroCard were missing from her dresser. The man told police, “I was curious.” Police arrested Paulo Tavares, 40, for felony grand larceny.

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Triangle memorial is a wedge issue in Village BY ALBERT AMATEAU

he 105th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire drew a crowd of 400 on Wed., March 23, including relatives of victims who perished in the tragedy, labor union members, firefighters and neighbors. They gathered at the intersection of Washington Place and Greene St., where a Fire Department company in front of New York University’s Brown Building raised its ladder to the eighth floor. It was the highest that ladders could go on that tragic Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, when a fire that started in a waste bin engulfed the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the then-Asch Building, now the property of N.Y.U. Most of the 146 employees who died, ranging in age from 14 to 42 and most of them young women, worked on the ninth floor. As each victim was named at the commemoration last week, a white carnation was laid on the sidewalk. Then red carnations were laid in honor of people who died over the years in garment factory fires in North Carolina, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Russia and elsewhere. Among the neighbors at the event, members of the Washington Place Block Association distributed handbills denouncing a proposal by Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition to erect a memorial to the victims. The proposal, for which Governor Cuomo has pledged $1.5 million, calls for three sets of reflective steel panels. There would be two horizontal panels, one at hip height and the other above head level, encircling the two street sides of the building. Names of the victims inscribed on the top panel would be reflected down to the bottom where they could be read by passersby. Another metal panel would run up the building’s southeast corner from the ground to the eighth floor. Howard Negrin, president of the block association, said, “The proposal is garish and gimmicky. It belongs more on Times Square. It lacks dignity and dishonors the memory of the tragedy’s victims.” Negrin also said the reflective panels would shine into the windows of residents across the street. At a Community Board 2 town hall meeting in February, Joel Sosinsky, a spokesperson for Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, said the project would be illuminated by sunlight and LED lights at the top to enable reflections to reach down to the ground. The display would be visible from “several blocks away,” according to coalition statements at the meeting. The coalition still has to raise about $1 million for maintenance and insurTheVillager.com

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

At last week’s anniversary memorial service for the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, some of the participants held up blouses with sashes emblazoned with the victims’ names.

ance for the project. Since the Brown Building is a designated city landmark, as well as a National Historic Site, the final plan must go to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission for review. Terri Cude, C.B. 2 first vice chairperson, said last week that the board would review the plan after it is submitted to L.P.C., probably by the end of the year. Absent from the commemoration for the first time in the past several years was Michael Hirsch, an East Village resident and a recognized authority on the history of the Triangle Fire. He, too, is opposed to the proposed memorial. “All you have to do is stand on the cobblestones of Greene St. at Washington Place and see a streetscape virtually unchanged from 1911,” he told The Villager last week. “There’s nothing like it in the city. History was

played out there. “Just around the corner was where the Stonecutters’ Riot broke out around 1834,” Hirsch said. “The stonecutters were protesting the use of prison labor to quarry and dress stone for public and private buildings. “There’s no way that an eight-storytall series of mirrors could do anything but deface this building. There should be something that supplements the plaque that’s already there.” Hirsch, a professional genealogist and writer, began working on the history of the Triangle Fire several years ago, inspired by a 2003 book by David Von Drehle, “Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.” Hirsch undertook the task of untangling the names of the fire victims and finding the identities of six previously unknown victims. “It took four years to straighten it all out,” he said.

Hirsch tries to visit the graves of all 146 victims of the fire at least two times a year. “It’s a mitzvah [Hebrew for a charitable act commanded in the Bible] for me, and I’m in touch with 90 percent of the victims’ relatives,” he said. That means lots of visits to cemeteries, 16 of them, according to Hirsch. Some families lost more than one to the fire. Hirsch cited the Maltese family, which lost three members. The eldest, Caterina, was 30. Rosaria and Lucia were her younger sisters; all are buried in Calvary Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. The Weiner family lost Rosie, 19, but her sister Katie, 16, who also worked at Triangle, survived the fire. March 25 was a fateful date for the Weiners; eight years earlier, another sister, Esther Weiner, was killed in a March 25, 1903, streetcar accident in Lower Manhattan. Sarah Brenman and her sister Rose, in the country only a few weeks, both perished in the fire. “I found one victim, Lizzie Adler, who lived on my block on E. Sixth St.,” Hirsch said. Rosa Grasso, 14, one of the three youngest victims, was buried in Calvary Cemetery without a headstone. “I put an entry on my Facebook page a few years ago, saying I wished I could get a headstone for Rosa,” Hirsch recalled. “And Rachel Grant Meyer, one of the rabbis at Rodeph Sholom on W. 83rd St., saw the entry and convinced the synagogue to donate a headstone for her.” The owners of Triangle Shirtwaist, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were tried for manslaughter before Judge Thomas C.T. Crain. The all-male jury acquitted them. While the conventional wisdom holds the acquittal to have been a travesty of justice, Hirsch believes the jury was justified. “The assertion that the doors on the ninth floor were locked was not based on reliable testimony,” Hirsch said. “The defense attorney, Max Steuer, did not have a hard job dealing with it,” he added. Survivors who said the doors were locked appeared to be testifying according to a prepared script. There was testimony that when a ninth-floor door finally opened and before the eighth floor took fire, victims feared the smoke and ran up to the 10th floor. Panic prevailed and several people jumped to their deaths. “The owners were in the building at the time, and two of the victims who died, Jacob Bernstein and Max Florin, were related to Blanck,” Hirsch said. “Esther Harris, said to be Isaac Harris’s favorite niece, was horribly injured in a fall down an elevator shaft. Although she survived and recovered, she died young.” March 31, 2016

Bob Adelman, 85, photographer who covered OBITUARY BY MARY REINHOLZ

oted photojournalist Bob Adelman, a freelancer deeply involved in the early civil rights movement who shot an iconic photo of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and went on to document a wide swath of American society, died March 19 at his home in Miami Beach. He was 85 and had relocated to South Florida from Manhattan nearly 20 years ago. In addition to covering the civil rights movement, Adelman’s subjects ranged from the world of high-concept art to the underground scene of hustlers and sex clubs in Downtown New York. Early news reports touched off suspicions of foul play when police cordoned off his house as a crime scene after a friend found him alone with a head wound and unresponsive. But Darren J. Caprara, director of operations at the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Department, told The Villager that Adelman suffered a heart attack “and then injured his head when he fell.” He attributed his death to hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease. The twice-divorced roving lensman, a Brooklyn-born son of Eastern European immigrants who grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, during the Great Depression and graduated from Stuyvesant High School, was also a prolific book producer. He published at least 75 books on diverse subjects, including the bawdy “Tijuana Bibles,” and also put together books with the Life magazine imprint. His photographs have been collected in major museums, among them the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art. Adelman, who studied law at Harvard University and held a master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia University, was buried March 23 at Mt. Ararat Cemetery in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Survivors include his daughter Samantha Joy Reay, by his first wife, Trudy Vine; a sister, Delores Feldman; and three grandchildren. Several colleagues and cronies said Adelman was working up until the time he died. “He was here in New York, staying at the Waldorf, just a few weeks ago and talking about his print of Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Greene Street Mural,’ ” a 96-foot-long masterwork that Adelman had a photographed at Leo Castelli’s Soho gallery in 1984, said James Cavello, a founder and owner of the Westwood art gallery at 568 Broadway at Prince St., who attended Adelman’s graveside funeral.

March 31, 2016

PHOTO © DAN BUDNIK

In a probably never-before-published photo, Bob Adelman with marchers in Lowndes County on March 24, 1965, during the Selma-toMontgomery march.

PHOTO © BOB ADELMAN

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. giving his “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.

“He photographed all the great artists, the giants of the art world” — including Andy Warhol and the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett — noted Cavello, who curated a 2008 exhibition of Adelman’s civil rights photos at Westwood. “He was in the belly of the beast, in the middle of what was going on. Whether it was civil rights or gay rights, Bob was there. He was amazing. How many individuals do you know who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King? He was a white Jewish photographer and he also photographed Malcolm X.” Asked what it was like to work with Adelman, Cavello laughed and said, “Like most photographers, he was difficult. But he was a true artist with great integrity.” Cavello plans to host a memorial for Adelman after Westwood Gallery moves to 262 Bowery in June. Adelman’s 72-inch print of Lichtenstein’s “Greene Street Mural” will be on display, said the gallery’s co-owner, Margarite Almeida. There are reports of a memorial being planned for Adelman at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which appointed him as a consulting photographer and lecturer in August 2014. He began a series of four lectures there, one on his book “Andy Warhol’s First Fifteen Minutes” during the Library’s National Book Festival. Stephen Watt, Adelman’s manager at his Miami Beach archives, said his late boss was on schedule to do his “last” talk for the library on Bastille Day, July 14. Watt described Adelman as “one of a kind, much larger than life,” noting his published books included one on Soviet military power and another on the Bill of Rights, with Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York for 23 years. By many accounts, Adelman was a driven and complicated man who didn’t drink or smoke but who struggled for years with his weight. He had a mischievous sense of humor and photographed his “shrinking” size in nude photos he took for Esquire magazine. He once said in an interview: “When I photographed, I was intent on telling the truth as best I saw it and then to help in doing something about it.” Famed novelist Ann Beattie, who was a friend and collaborator with Adelman since 1981 when she lived in Chelsea, said in an e-mail that the quirky photographer was “not an easy person, but he was nevertheless his own person, and he was amazingly hard working, up until the day he died, and he always aspired to a more equitable balance of power. His convictions about soADELMAN continued on p. 15 TheVillager.com

civil rights, M.L.K.; A larger-than-life figure ADELMAN continued from p. 14

cial justice were formed early, and in a way, everything he did touched on and elaborated his beliefs.” Beattie wrote a revised introduction to Adelman’s 1990 book “Carver Country,” since updated, which featured the gritty writings of Raymond Carver, which Adelman illustrated with his own photographs of Carver’s blue-collar terrain. She said Adelman’s shots “depicted not just the man [Carver] but the interrelationship of the landscape he inhabited and its influence on him.” Adelman, Beattie said, in a response to a question, was a socialist and also a lonely guy, known for making outrageously provocative comments that “justifiably” offended some women. But not Karen Marks, director at the Howard Greenberg Gallery at 41 E. 57th St., which showcased Adelman’s work at several exhibitions, including one titled “Injustice: Civil Rights Photographs.” “I took it in stride,” she said of his off-color comments. “Bob was a big guy, a big presence and a big personality.” Adelman first became known on the national stage when he was chronicling the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. He had taken photography classes at The New School from Russian photographer and designer Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director at Harper’s Bazaar, and was a protégé of Jacques Lowe, official photographer for President John F. Kennedy. Adelman became a volunteer photographer for both the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNNC), photographing sit-ins and marches in hot spots like Selma, Alabama. One of his best-known pictures shows four civil rights activists holding hands in Birmingham as police sprayed them with water cannons to clear the streets. In a 2008 interview with NPR, Adelman said the hoses were so powerful they could “skin the bark off a tree.” He observed that a “single individual could not stand up [to the cannon]. But as a group they could. And it became emblematic. That picture was actually part of the recruiting for The March on Washington,” he said. In those days, he was often at the side of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and had access to other prominent civil rights activists, like the writer James Baldwin. His photos appeared in Look, Life and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Many were collected in his 2007 book “Mine Eyes Have Seen: Bearing Witness to the Civil Rights Struggle.” He TheVillager.com

PHOTO © BOB ADELMAN, COURTESY HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY, NEW YORK

Andy Warhol outside the Factory on 47th St. in New York City in 1965.

PHOTO © BOB ADELMAN, COURTESY HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY, NEW YORK

A water-hosed demonstrator in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.

PHOTO © BOB ADELMAN

Samuel Beckett photographed by Bob Adelman.

received numerous awards honoring his work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship. Adelman was also intrigued by the sexual revolution and the seamy underside of the American Dream. This reporter first met him after he had published a 1972 best seller called “Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in

the Life of a Pimp” with writer Susan Hall. He photographed a pimp named Silky, and his adoring “family” of prostitutes. Hall provided the text. The two teamed up on six books together after first collaborating on a series about prostitution for New York magazine, said Hall’s son, David Hall Leavitt, a tax attorney.

Leavitt, 39, said Adelman functioned as a father to him “for all of my life. I loved him,” he said. “He was incredibly generous and loving and good to me in many ways.” Leavitt said that he spent weekends with Adelman as a child at the photographer’s lower Fifth Ave. studio at 18th St., where he worked and lived, and would join Adelman on Sundays when the lensman would play chess with his close friend Roy Lichtenstein. Adelman later moved to the Flower District near Lichtenstein’s loft and left Manhattan for Miami Beach after Lichtenstein died in 1997. During a telephone conversation, Leavitt recalled how Adelman developed films overnight “and he taught me how to print. He had a lot of energy and unparalleled intellect,” he said. John Loengard, a former photo editor at Life who worked with Adelman during the ’80s and also taught with him at The New School and the International Center for Photography, observed: “I never heard him say anything that was not intelligent.” Loengard noted that Adelman also had a special instinct about people and a “wonderful way of being able to go get them to re-enact events that we would put in the magazine.” One of the most memorable of those, Loengard said, was when Adelman photographed a state trooper from Texas who angrily recalled being “handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was shot [by Jack Ruby in Dallas].” Asked how Adelman was able to get close to such extraordinary characters, Loengard replied: “Most of us are too humble to ask, but Bob never hesitated to make contact. He was very sweet and had sides to him that I didn’t know about.” March 31, 2016

Fiery tragedy on 2nd Ave. galvanized a community

EDITORIAL

his past Saturday marked the anniversary of the horrific gas explosion that tore a hole in the heart of the East Village. This foreseeable and preventable disaster caused so much suffering. It took two young lives, leveled three residential buildings, displaced numerous people and slammed local businesses that were in the immediate blast zone and surrounding area. This February, the first step toward justice being served for this crime occurred when four people were indicted for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with the explosion and the raging inferno it sparked. Maria Hrynenko, who owns 121 Second Ave. where the blast occurred, her son Michael Hrynenko, contractor Dilber Kukic and plumber Athanasios “Jerry” Ioannidis were also charged with assault in the second degree. In addition, Andrew Trombettas was charged with “renting” his master plumbing license to Ioannidis, so that the latter could get work on the property approved, according to the Manhattan district attorney.

The defendants allegedly set up an elaborate illegal gas line to siphon gas to upstairs residential apartments. When the jury-rigged system was first discovered by inspectors, the gas was shut off. But the “Gas House Gang” then foolhardily and arrogantly allegedly set up a similar system — but this time hid it behind a closed door so that inspectors could not see it. We all know the results of March 26, 2015: Three empty lots surrounded by a chain-link fence on which hang photos of Nicholas Figueroa and Moises Locón, whose entire lives still lay ahead of them. On Saturday, local politicians, led by Councilmember Rosie Mendez, held a Day of Remembrance at the site, and noted that a package of nine bills is pending in the council that will tighten up notifications and regulations around gas shut-offs, among other things. In addition, state Senator Brad Hoylman noted that one of the lots is already on the market for $10 million. Hoylman said he plans to introduce legislation in Albany, similar to the Son of Sam Law, to block landlords from reaping profit from their property after perpetrating such crimes. As the politicians declared, cutting corners and “putting profits over people” will not be tolerated — nor financially rewarded.

Under current law, though, the three adjoining lots at the corner of Second Ave. and E. Seventh St. are now no longer under the rent-stabilization system — since the former buildings are gone — so new market-rate housing could be built there. Former tenants charged that Maria Hrynenko — like so many landlords in today’s red-hot Manhattan real estate market — clearly wanted rent-regulated tenants out, so that she could charge top dollar. The gas siphoning was just another way to shave off some money and increase profits — yet while ignoring the grave risk it posed to people’s lives. Of course, had the explosion occurred at a different time of day, the casualties could have been much worse. Out of the explosion’s ashes, however, the East Village community rallied to the victims’ aid. Early on, local restaurants pitched in with free meals. Immense thanks is due to LES Ready, a coalition of 40 groups ranging from the Red Cross to Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), which funneled at least $200,000 — much of that coming from the Mayor’s Fund — to the victims, and helped them in countless ways, such as providing gift cards to IKEA, Sleepy’s and Lowe’s, so that the victims could get

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR City Council hypocrites To The Editor: Re “ ‘Save Our Supermarket!’ 14th grocery faithful take protest to landlord” (news article, March 24): Déjà vu all over again. The City Council speaks with a forked tongue when it comes to addressing this longstanding small business crisis. No way the Council will bite the real estate industry that

feeds them. We have had at least five Council bills addressing this problem dating back to the Koch administration, yet not one bill has made it out of committee for a vote on the Council floor. It is easy for councilmembers to claim to support a bill, when they know full well that they will not be called upon to actually vote for the bill. The “legal problem” claim that is being utilized by some for delaying a vote is a red herring. There is no legal opinion from the corporation counsel

IRA BLUTREICH

new beds and furnishings and try to rebuild their lives. Also stepping into the breach was writer Alan Kaufman, who organized a benefit concert at Lorcan Otway’s Theatre 80 on St. Mark’s Place, headlined by rock legends Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye, that raised $50,000. Kaufman gave the cash to LES Ready to disburse to the victims. According to Ayo Harrington, who coordinated the LES Ready effort, about one-third of the tenants displaced by the blast have moved out of Manhattan or out of state altogether. Another third — largely young professionals who were already living with roommates — have relocated around the Downtown area and are in similar living situations. Another third are still living nearby on E. Third and E. Fourth Sts. in temporary housing made available by Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. In short, this catastrophe is a tragic symbol for what is happening on so many levels in the East Village and elsewhere, as landlords, blinded by their own greed, are literally wrecking lives. Justice must be served in this case. Too much damage and suffering was caused. Harsh sentences will put landlords on notice that they will be held accountable.

opposing the bill. It is time for our councilmembers to vote on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act or get off the pot. Alfred Placeres Placeres is president, New York State Federation of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce

Hey, sorry...things change To The Editor: Re “Time to look at bigger picture on small businesses” (editorial, March 17): Look folks, that store has been there ever since I can remember, at least 20 years. The fact is that New Yorkers have changed in the Chelsea and West Village area during that time. New folks have moved in and paid 10 times more for their co-op and condo apartments, or are paying 10 times more in rent. Google moved in two blocks away from Associated and their people don’t want anything at Associated. They buy Starbucks and pay for organic, luxury and gourmet instead of wholesale, discount and secondhand. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Gristedes, Western Beef, Gourmet Garage, Garden of Eden and FreshDirect are all market-driven viable alternatives. Donald Moder

Future shock (of hair)? The “Donald-Do” trending. 16

March 31, 2016

LETTERS continued on p. 18

TheVillager.com

When Chinese state censorship reached the L.E.S. GLOBAL (EAST) VILLAGE BY BILL WEINBERG

anhattan-based artist Joyce Yu-Jean Lee never guessed she was in for a bit of international intrigue and even global headlines when she launched a show and accompanying discussion panels in February at a couple of alternative venues on the Lower East Side. The installation, which lasted a month, was a pop-up Internet cafe dubbed “Firewall.” This is a reference to the “Great Firewall of China” (officially the “Golden Shield”) that filters the Internet in the People’s Republic. At Firewall Cafe, visitors got to input search terms of their choice into computers attached to split-screen monitors set up to display simultaneously the results from Google and Baidu — the state-approved Chinese alternative, operating from within the Great Firewall. The installation was hosted by a gallery with the appropriate name of Chinatown Soup. (Although it is actually on lower Orchard St., just where Chinatown is now starting to expand into the old Lower East Side). Baidu is the default search engine at all the Internet cafes in Chinatown, but in China it is practically mandatory. Google is blocked there — along with Facebook, Twitter and the Web sites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. For the month that the Firewall installation was up, some 4,000 searches were logged, and eventually the results will all be browsable at the show’s Web site, Firewallcafe.com. The most obvious contrasts, you might imagine, come from the search “Tiananmen Square.” Google brings back iconic images from the 1989 protests and repression. There is of course not a trace of this on Baidu — strictly tourism shots. In a cross-fertilization between Chinatown and the L.E.S. art scene, Apex for Youth, a program for underserved Asian communities in the city, organized classes of schoolkids to come visit the exhibition. But what got Firewall Cafe into trouble was the pair of panel discussions that accompanied the installation, hosted by the Rivington St. tech collective Orbital. The first, held Feb. 19, was entitled “Networked Feminism in China,” and was to feature, in addition to Lee, three activists from the People’s Republic. One was Lu Pin, editor of the Beijing-based journal and social media platform Feminist Voices. Lu was a mentor figure for the “Feminist Five,” young women who were detained for weeks last year after performing a piece of public protest theater to oppose sexual harassment on the Beijing subway. Another was Xintong Liu, a designer and “social innovator” who organized the first L.G.B.T. group at Xiamen University. But the next one can’t be named. Lee will only say that this panelist works for women’s rights in China. After her name appeared on the announcement for the panel, her employer was pressured by government officials, in turn, to pressure her to cancel her participation in the panel. Lee and her co-organizers removed her name from the announcement, and tried to scrub the Internet of any mention of her name in the context TheVillager.com

PHOTOS BY ISAAC JAMES

The pop-up Firewall Internet Cafe ran from Feb. 9 to March 6 at Chinatown Soup gallery, at 16 Orchard St., with roundtable discussions at Orbital, 155 Rivington St.

Dual-screen computer stations allowed users to do an Internet search, then see how the results varied on Google versus Baidu, China’s government-approved portal.

of the panel. This online purge didn’t help — the threats escalated. The decision was taken to drop her from the panel. “I felt very guilty,” Lee said. “Here I am trying to do something supportive, and I got one of the panelists into trouble, inadvertently. I was caught offguard. The panel was not even specifically related to censorship. It was about the role of the Internet in organizing support for the Feminist Five. To get this kind of backlash at an event about feminism was kind of shocking.” The incident sparked a reckoning about the lineup for the next panel.

“We made a decision: No more Chinese nationals were to participate in our panels,” said Lee. The second panel, on “Creative Hacktivism,” actually did touch on issues of censorship. One panelist was Jason Ng, author of “Blocked on Weibo” — a book examining what content gets suppressed on China’s answer to Twitter. Another was Josh Bronson, a stateside supporter of GreatFire.org, a group that documents the content-filtering of the Great Firewall — and attempts to circumvent it through technical creativity. But the panel was itself censored, in a way — the Chinese nationals initially invited to participate were dropped. It is unknowable how far up in the bureaucracy the decision to pressure the panelist emerged. And the pressure arguably backfired — the cancellation got Lee and her project written up in the Washington Post, certainly unwanted attention for Beijing. But the affair points to the fragility of freedom in a globalized age. “As Americans we take our free press rights completely for granted,” Lee said. “A fifth of the world’s population doesn’t have the freedom to see the world the way we see it, unfiltered.” However, Lee acknowledged that Google filters search results, as well — if in more subtle ways than Baidu. She says that the idea of her project was to take a “critical look at both Google and Baidu.” Lu Pin has continued to speak publicly in Lower Manhattan — most recently at a March 23 panel on “Chinese Queer/Feminist Activists” at Bluestockings bookstore on Allen St. Lee said she has to respect the decisions of Chinese nationals regarding how public they want to be in their activism. “I don’t take the same kind of risk,” she said. “I just run the risk of not getting a visa the next time I want to visit China. It’s not the same thing. If you want to be very vocal, I respect that. If you want to maintain your anonymity, I respect that, too.” Lee’s interest in China has a personal aspect. She grew up in Texas, but her parents fled the Communist takeover of China in 1949 — initially to Taiwan. Her 2012 film, “Unfolding Nai Nai,” is something of an oral history project, in which the family’s story is revealed through the memories of Lee’s grandmother — now 102 years old and still living in Taiwan. Lee’s eyes were also opened by her 2011 artist residency program in China, where she had to use a VPN device to access the Web freely. (That’s a “virtual private network” that works by connecting to the Web through a computer outside China.) One friend she made in China, a young gay artist, later committed suicide — which Lee attributes, at least in part, to the closed atmosphere for people such as himself. And things have hardly improved in China since then. “Under Xi Jinping, the political climate is much more tense and fraught than it’s been in a long time,” Lee said. She cited the findings of rights groups that China is now facing its harshest atmosphere since the repression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and the closing of political space in the aftermath. And now that pressure was felt a world away on Rivington St. “Censorship doesn’t just happen online,” Lee said, summing up her take-away from the affair. “It happens in daily life through intimidation and coercion.” March 31, 2016

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Continued from p. 16

Politicians heed power To The Editor: Re “Time to look at bigger picture on small businesses” (editorial, March 17): Under current laws, the owners of commercial properties can charge whatever rents they wish. I may be ignorant, but my perception is that politicians have the power to change existing laws and to make new laws to protect the city, its culture and ideals, and its inhabitants. But the city appears, in case after case, to be “giving the store away.” I understand that a show of support from citizens is helpful in passing laws. But it seems to me that the support of the citizenry has not been necessary for passing pass laws in cases where the interests of rich and powerful international and corporate entities are concerned. Indeed, my perception as a plain, nonrich citizen is that large groups of local citizens only get their way when higher-ups were planning to do what these citizens wanted anyway.

How do our elected officials see our future? More important, how do elected officials analyze the present situation in New York City? And, most important, why do the elected officials appear to be protecting their own power bases at the expense of the life and health of the city? Minerva Durham

The same old problem To The Editor: Re “Time to look at bigger picture on small businesses” (editorial, March 17): Some 30-odd years ago, then-City Councilmember Ruth Messinger created the Small Business Task Force in an attempt to initiate rent protections for small businesses that were closing due to their increasing unrestricted commercial rents. Unfortunately, the task force became bogged down, with the city saying the state needed to pass legislation and the state saying the city needed to act first. Around that time, Community Boards 3 and 6, in response to the drug problems along E. 14th St., cre-

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ated a task force that evolved into Sweet 14. One of this group’s early efforts was to encourage local landlords to renew commercial leases at nominal increases in return for tax advantages and low-interest loans offered to both the businesses and the landlords. The results included a study, an expensive economic development design project placing plastic signs along stores, and new or newly painted tree guards, subway grates and lights. There are now very few small businesses left to protect. Will there be any left before legislation catches up to reality? Susan Leelike

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PHOTO BY BEAU ROSEN

Last Friday at noon, in front of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, on W. 14th St. between Ninth and 10th Aves., there was a re-enactment of Christ on the cross. Before the re-enactment, there was a run-through to prepare, above.

To The Editor: Re “Indian Point 11 plead ‘guilty and proud’ in court” (news article, March 17): Thank you all for standing your ground! Indian Point is a ticking time bomb and must be closed, before it’s too late. Erica Gray

Purple answers To The Editor: Re “The dark side of Purple” (news article, Dec. 31, 2015): Credit Lincoln Anderson with excellent reporting about a sick, narcissistic, individual who nevertheless contributed a lot to his times and community. Covering the later stages of Adam Purple’s court battles and the garden’s demise taught me a lot about journalism, as did the old professor from Headquarters of Intergalactic Psychic Police. Other than the black-and-white photos illustrating Villager stories of that era, nothing was black and white dealing with the Rev. Les Ego or his more passionate followers. You’ve answered questions stretching back decades. I won’t condemn the Purple Man. The Garden and “Zentences” were each bigger, in a sense, than their creator. And the times themselves arguably invited some of the personal excesses. But there’s no forgiving David L. Wilkie’s selfish and, what you so credibly present as, persistent abuse of innocents and vulnerable souls who looked up to him. Continued on p. 28 TheVillager.com

Be a fool for April arts

Outside, the cruelest month…inside, pure entertainment! BY SCOTT STIFFLER

omplaining about the lingering cold, panicking about the looming IRS deadline, and dedicating the entirety of our arts section to the Tribeca Film Festival for three consecutive weeks: These are the days of our lives, every time April rolls around. And although there’s little to be done about Old Man Winter and Uncle Sam, we’re determined to provide you with a hardly-definitive-but-highly-worthy guide to cashing in on the wealth of A&E riches taking place before, during, and after we lavish attention on that Tribeca fest. A good place to start: three of our favorite silver screen destinations, year in and year out. Currently booked to screen through the seventh day of the month that shares its name with the title character, “April and the Extraordinary World” is garnering rave reviews for its stunning interpretation of steampunk visuals and themes. Set in an alternate universe’s 1941 Paris, the French/ Belgian/Canadian animated film (an adaptation of Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel) has a young girl getting an assist from her talking cat, as she peels back the layers of a far-reaching conspiracy behind the disappearance of her scientist parents. Screenings before 3 p.m. are in English; after, in the original French with English subtitles. At the IFC Center (323 Sixth Ave.; ifccenter.com). Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Ave.; anthologyfilmarchives. org) welcomes an encore event from the KGB Movie Friends, a group of gonzo pals with their own weekly TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY AHRON R. FOSTER

A musical that makes waves, fit for the whole family: Atlantic Theater Company’s “The Pirate La Dee Da” is on deck through Apr. 17.

Sun. night screening series at the Kraine Theater (85 E. Fourth St.; text 917-251-4139 for info). On Apr. 14 at Anthology, the “Big Bowie Bash: A Tribute…Redux” features David Bowie clips, videos, performances, footage, interviews, and miscellaneous oddities (space and otherwise) culled from a recent four-plus-hour “Movie Friends” event. Sundays through June 26, the Film Forum Jr. series plants the seed of cinemania in little sprouts, with classics both undiscovered and

familiar. On Apr. 3, set the stage for a lifetime’s worth of debating the relative merits of our greatest silent film comedians, as Steve Sterner, live and at the piano, accompanies Charlie Chaplin in “The Immigrant” (1917), Harold Lloyd in “Get Out and Get Under” (1920), and Laurel & Hardy in “Two Tars” (1928). Other screenings include 1941’s “The Wolf Man” paired with a Bugs Bunny short (Apr. 17), 2001’s grumpy green ogre redemption tale “Shrek” (May 29), and a trio of Broadway shows adapted to

the big screen. On May 15, 1978’s “Grease” is a great companion piece (or antidote) for those still swooning to the live version on FOX. The series goes into hibernation after June 26’s “1776,” then picks back up on Sept. 11. All seats are $8, all screenings begin at 11 a.m., at Film Forum (209 W. Houston St.; filmforum.org). The Atlantic Theater ’s Atlantic for Kids series has extended its run of the new musical “The Pirate APRIL ARTS continued on p. 20 March 31, 2016

Aww, some April arts APRIL ARTS continued from p. 19

La Dee Da,” a loony tale about a princess who’s had it with the obligations of her royal role — so she runs off into the night, hops on a ship, and applies her gift for exceeding expectations to the goal of becoming “the most feared pirate on The Seven Seas.” Through Apr. 17, Sat. & Sun. at 10:30 a.m., at the Linda Gross Theater (336 W. 20th St.; atlantictheater.org). That’s not the only notable wave Atlantic is riding these days. The treasured Chelsea theater — which recently presented works by David Mamet (“Ghost Stories”) and Billie Joe Armstrong (“These Paper Bullets!”) — just announced they’ve commissioned new plays from an aesthetically diverse group of scrappy creative types. Some have longstanding ties to the Atlantic, and others will be making their maiden voyage: Jocelyn Bioh, Jennifer Haley, Paola Lázaro, Qui Nguyen, Heidi Schreck, and Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel. We’re especially interested to see what Nguyen will cook up. A co-founder of the famed Vampire Cowboys troupe, his signature blend of comic and pop culture geekspeak, martial arts moves and weaponry, gallons of splattering hemoglobin, and sword-sharp satire has made him an enduring favorite of this publication (likeminded Nguyen connoisseurs should also be on tenterhooks for his play “Vietgone,” which begins previews Oct. 4 at Manhattan Theatre Club). Choreographer and director Mark DeGarmo’s transcultural dance/theater work, “Las Fridas: A Movement Installation and Offering,” is a “love letter to Mexico and an offering to Frida Kahlo” that weaves sun/moon, mother/ child, sacred/secular, and ancient/ current imagery throughout its Mesoamerican mandala structure. Educational theorist Maxine Greene and Living Theatre co-founder Judith Malina make appearances through ghostly video projections, while Kahlo’s gender fluidity is acknowledged by having her role played by Marie Baker-Lee and Luis Gabriel Zaragoza at, respectively, evening and matinee performances. Apr. 20–24 at The Flamboyán Theater, The Clemente (107 Suffolk St.; lasfridas.eventbrite.com and markdegarmodance.org). The bread and butter of Metropolitan Playhouse may be resurrecting largely forgotten

March 31, 2016

PHOTO BY LEON ANTHONY JAMES

Choreographer and director Mark DeGarmo’s transcultural dance/theater installation, “Las Fridas,” unfolds at The Flamboyán Theater, Apr. 20–24.

PHOTO BY JACOB J.GOLDBERG

Actor Jesse Hawkes (left) is multi-hyphenated artist Robert Hieger, in a monologue that’s part of Metropolitan Playhouse’s “East Side Stories,” Apr. 12–May 1.

works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but they’re also heavily invested in generating new material that will stand the test of time. One such effort is the annual “East Side Stories” series, which chronicles the life and lore of its East Village neighborhood. This year, installment #12 presents eight new plays and six new solo shows. Immigrant identity, xenophobia, authoritarianism, gentrification, and artistic freedom are among the themes touched upon (or tackled, as the case may be). Colorful characters of past and present are represented (Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed, CBGB founder Hilly Kristal), along with historical events (the 1863 draft riots, the Great Rent Strike of 1908). The “Players” program has actors performing monologues culled from interviews with neighborhood residents, including Living Theatre collaborator Robert Hieger and improv comedian Athos Cakiades. Apr. 12– May 1, at Metropolitan Playhouse (220 E. Fourth St.; metropolitanplayhouse.org). Located on the western outskirts of Chelsea since 1971, The Kitchen has seen the neighborhood go from sketchy to trendy, then clubby to crowded with High Line traffic. One thing that hasn’t changed: The nonprofit performance space remains a wild and untamed destination for highly disciplined raw talent in the fields of dance, music, performance, theater, video, film, and art. The Kitchen’s Apr. 6–June 11 spring season kicks off with an Apr. 6–8 run of “They Come to Us Without a Word II.” Video footage of artist Joan Jonas’ work that appeared at last year’s 56th Venice Biennale will be accompanied by live performances of compositions by her longtime collaborator, jazz pianist Jason Moran. “My work involves the question of how the world is so rapidly and radically changing,” says Jonas, who implies those ideas travel “poetically through sound, light, and the juxtaposition of images of children, animals, and landscape.” Apr. 13–May 14, in The Kitchen’s gallery, artist Ed Atkins’ “Performance Capture” presents new work that uses live bodies and animated surrogates to explore “how contemporary technologies of representation mediate our lives.” The hypnotic music composed by Angelo Badalamenti to fill David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Pacific Northwest mill town with simmerAPRIL ARTS continued on p. 21 TheVillager.com

Awesome April Arts! APRIL ARTS continued from p. 20

ing sexuality, existential dread, and supernatural possibility gets a fittingly surreal interpretation, when Jamie Stewart’s experimental band Xiu Xiu plays the music of “Twin Peaks” on Apr. 30. “Dance and Process,” May 6–7, features the results of a 10-week process during which choreographers Karen Bernard, Benjamin Van Buren, Niall Jones and Ander Mikalson helped one another develop new work. All events take place at The Kitchen (512 W. 19th St.; thekitchen.org). Ballet Hispanico celebrates its 45th season with a program that includes the New York premiere of Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s “Flabbergast,” and the troupe’s signature work: “Club Havana,” by Cuban-American choreographer Pedro Ruiz). A Sunday “En Familia” matinee takes kids on a fun-filled journey through Latin American dance and culture, via excerpts from the troupe’s diverse repertory (and a Q&A with the dancers). Apr. 5–10 at the Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Ave.; ballethispanico.org). NYC’s all-female classical theater troupe, The Queen’s Company, promises an “unexpected redemptive ending” to their take on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” which calls into question the role of obedience in matters of courtship, love, and marriage. Founding Artistic Director Rebecca Patterson vows a celebration of “the poly-cultural American voice,” while maintaining the company’s unyielding approach to the classics, in which “male characters are performed as written — that is as Renaissance men, who move through the world quite differently from contemporary men — transcending gender. They are complete in their humanity and can be played equally well by either male or female actors.” Apr. 16–May 1, at the Wild Project (195 E. Third St.; queenscompany.org). Dysfunctional Theatre Company mines the pep (and percolating unease) of post-World War II America, in an evening of short plays, songs, and swing dancing. Their “Treasure Trove of Transmitted Theater” takes you behind the scenes, as the WDYS radio variety hour makes its very first (and possibly last?) broadcast on the new medium of television. Through Apr. 2 (no show Mar. 31), at the Thirteenth Street Repertory Theater (50 W. 13th St.; dysfunctionTheVillager.com

PHOTO BY PAULA LOBO

Celebrating 45 seasons of great leaps, Ballet Hispanico touches down at the Joyce Theater, Apr. 5–10. Seen here, the signature work “Club Havana.”

altheatre.org). LABA, a creative forum that uses classic Jewish texts as the basis for performances, public events and gallery shows, is in the midst of a season whose commissioned works explore the intersection of beauty and equality. To that end, dancer Rebecca Margolick and composer/ graphic artist Maxx Berkowitz’s “Bird Sing a Pretty Song” uses movement and interactive media to explore how technology impacts states of being, such as solitude and chaos. Apr. 7 and 9 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 E. 14th St.; labajournal.com/calendar). A fast-paced, streamlined production of “The Iceman Cometh,” from Hudson Guild Theatre Company, puts an emphasis on the plot’s comedic and heartbreaking elements, while drawing a connection to playwright Eugene O’Neill’s formative experiences and the 1895 origins of Hudson Guild, which began as a settlement house assisting those in economic need. Director Jim Furlong notes how the tale of skid row drinking buddies was “based on O’Neill’s real life experiences circa 1912 while spending many hours in a dive bar called Jimmy the Priests, located at Fulton and Church Streets.” The characters who fight addiction and poverty, notes Furlong, “were part of the same community for which the Guild was providing services at the time. Thus, the play connects directly with the history of Hudson Guild and its work of helping to improve the lives of people existing in difficult socioeconomic circumstancAPRIL ARTS continued on p. 22

PHOTO BY BOB PILEGGI

Fluid and flawless: Amy Driesler as Lucentio, left, and Little Sweetie Doll as Bianca in The Queen’s Company’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” Apr. 16–May 1 at the Wild Project. March 31, 2016

The April arts you need, come what may APRIL ARTS continued from p. 21

es.” Film actor Brian Poteat (“The Bourne Legacy”), as traveling salesman Hickey, heads the 14-member company — many of whom have appeared in previous Hudson Guild productions. Through Apr. 3, at Hudson Guild Theatre (441 W. 26th St.; hudsonguild.org). A “Spring Forward” program from the Greenwich Village Orchestra has Barbara Yahr conducting works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Bruch. Grammy-nominated violinist Andres Cardenes is the guest. A reception with the musicians follows the concert. Apr. 10, at the Church of the Incarnation (209 Madison Ave.; gvo.org.). Grammy-nominated pianist Fred Hersch, percussionist Rogério Boccato with vocalist Jean Rohe, singer/songwriter Becca Stevens, and the Afro-Colombian folkloric ensemble La Cumbiamba eNeYé will perform, at The Middle Collegiate Church and Buddhist Global Relief’s fifth annual “Concert To Feed The Hungry.” Proceeds will help support efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition, in NYC and around the world. Apr. 9, at Middle Collegiate Church (112 Second Ave.; concerttofeedthehungry.org). On view through Apr. 16, Ji-Wan Joo’s “Cardboard Room” installation uses reconfigured cardboard to create a labyrinth (a visual and thematic motif the artist has long explored). “I’m fascinated with harmonies, proportions, division of line and space,” she says of her room’s puzzle piece design. “I think that there is no more beauty than simplicity, and the plainness of geometric shape and line as time goes by.” Conduct your own search for meaning (or at least clarity) by interacting with the artist, and her work — at an Apr. 7 reception, 5–7 p.m., at Noho-M55 Gallery (530 W. 25th St.; nohogallery.net). Twisting paths that challenge one’s navigation skills also come to mind — always in name, and often in post-curtain conversation — when it comes to works by the Labyrinth Theater Company. Their spring benefit is built around a staged reading of “Texas Red,” company member Jonathan Marc Sherman’s adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” Participating guest artists (subject to continuing availability) include Paul Dano, Peter Dinklage, and Laura Linney — alongside Labyrinth members including Bobby Cannavale, Chris Chalk, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Yul Vázquez, and Ethan Hawke.

March 31, 2016

PHOTO BY EARL DOUGLAS JR.

An all-star lineup will help raise funds for legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, at Apr. 4’s “All the WOO In The World” concert at Webster Hall.

Speaking of the project’s origins and possible future, Hawke recalls, “A few years ago, I did a production [of ‘Orchard’] as part of the Bridge Project, which Richard Linklater and Jonathan Marc Sherman came to see.” A conversation later that night found the trio proposing an adaptation “set in modern day Texas. So often in Chekhov, the issues of race and class are lost on audiences unable to fully grasp the nuances of Russian culture, and there is no play where Russia’s history of serfdom is more potent than in ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ Jonathan set about writing an adaptation that would make these themes come alive for a modern audience. Our dream is that one day this will be a film. We are inviting you to witness the beginning of our journey.” Earlier this week, Labyrinth

announced a continuation of the journey for its current production. Extended through Apr. 10, Mona Mansour’s “The Way West” finds two daughters staging a financial intervention when mom’s dysfunctional money management patterns keep snowballing long after she files for Chapter 11. The one-night-only “Texas Red” event happens at 5 p.m., Sun., Apr. 24, at Bank Street Theater (155 Bank St.; labtheater.org; $500 ticket includes post-reading talk back and reception with the cast). Patrons of the arts who enjoy an actual live performance in exchange for their generosity (as opposed to the fleeting endorphin rush one gets from making a crowdfunding donation) are in for a treat — several of them, in fact, in the form of these upcoming benefits:

Migrant youth, LGBT refugees, and survivors of gun violence are some of the marginalized communities whose stories are told in the Off-Broadway stage productions and post-performance discussions of Houses on the Moon Theater Company. Their fourth annual benefit, “AMPLIFY 2016,” will honor three philanthropic women: Laura Welch, whose Laura Welch & Associates connects social justice and youth development nonprofits with high-profile music artists, to produce fundraising events; Judy Sennesh, founder of the TransParents Project, a support group that serves families with transgender or gender variant loved ones, as a part of PFLAG NYC (Parents, Families and APRIL ARTS continued on p. 23 TheVillager.com

What’s in store for April arts Bustling burlesque venue The Slipper Room is the jam-packed scene of intersecting passion projects and showbiz milestones — when this publication’s longtime theater columnist, Trav S.D., presents “The Night of 1,000 Vaudevillians,” a stellar collection of Downtown talent. The bill, far too packed to mention in its entirety, includes chameleonic chanteuse Tammy Faye Starlite; dynamic cabarettist Molly Pope; sound and mime vocal cartoonist Zero Boy; sweet, offbeat ventriloquist Carlo Rhodes and sassy, taffy-loving Cecil Sinclair; and the cast of “I’ll Say She Is.” The evening functions as a fundraiser for the upcoming revival of this lost Marx Brothers musical — lovingly restored with scholarly precision and screwball flair by Noah Diamond, whose impeccable Groucho gives the production (which had a 2014 FringeNYC run) its comedic glue. Joining Diamond will be longtime

Trav S.D. foil Robert Pinnock, a journeyman percussionist and firstrate physical comic who supplies “I’ll Say She Is” with a pitch-perfect Chico. As for the intersecting interests this write-up teased you with at its outset: many of the performers presented by Mr. S.D. are veterans of his American Vaudeville Theatre series, which is nearing its 20th year of hooking Downtown audiences on the densely packed variety show format that had Lower East Side audiences swooning, in the days before radio and television were all the rage. A final point of note: Trav is about to pen his 1,000th vaudevillian profile, on the Travalance blog (travsd.wordpress.com). The “I’ll Say” benefit happens on Wed., Apr. 20, 7:30 p.m., at The Slipper Room (167 Orchard St.; slipperroom.com). Tickets are $10 general, $25 for preferred seating. That’s all, folks. This Way to the Egress!

PHOTO BY DON SPIRO

Trav S.D. presents a benefit for the upcoming revival of the Marx Brothers musical, “I’ll Say She Is” — Apr. 20 at The Slipper Room. Pictured: Noah Diamond and Melody Jane. APRIL ARTS continued from p. 22

Friends of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People); and law professor/litigator Lenni Benson, to be honored for her work as founder of the Safe Passage Project, which fights for the rights of indigent immigrant youth. Bookending the podium speeches and presentations are cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, a dessert bar, live music by the Latin/jazz/ world music-influenced Juancho Herrera Trio, and a performance by Houses on the Moon artists. Tickets are $150–600. Mon., Apr. 18, 6:30 p.m. at Gotham Comedy Club (208 W. 23rd St.; housesonthemoon.org). Taking its name from the 1978 debut album from ParliamentTheVillager.com

Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell, an allstar roster of musicians will do their thing under the banner of “All the WOO In The World” — a benefit concert held to help defray health care and living expenses for legendary keyboardist Worrell, who is battling Stage 4 lung cancer, prostate, and liver cancer. So far, the list of talent includes Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Meryl Streep, Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band, and the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra. Tickets are $50 in advance, $60 at the door, $100 for VIP. Mon., Apr. 4, 8 p.m. at Webster Hall (125 E. 11 St.; blackrockcoalition.org).

PHOTO BY JUSTIN PLOWMAN

Radio on TV: “A Dysfunctional Variety Hour” brings post-World War II pep, and dread, to the Thirteenth Street Repertory Theater, through Apr. 2. March 31, 2016

Ruffling feathers, pillow pugilists plan to fight PILLOWS continued from p. 1

cade and, during that time, the city has never once granted them the permits they’ve requested — so now they don’t even bother applying for one. “Every time we’ve applied for a permit, we’ve been denied,” said Kevin Bracken, co-founder of the Toronto-based Newmindspace, which formerly organized the event — it’s since been taken over by the Urban Playground Movement — and currently promotes the annual pillow fight. “They believe it will interfere with the average person’s ability to enjoy the park, but that’s ridiculous,” Bracken said. “It’s like saying the Macy’s Day Parade interferes with a person’s ability to drive a car down Central Park West.” Newmindspace began hosting the annual pillow fight in 2006, and has sited the event at various public spaces in addition to Washington Square Park, including Wall St. and Union Square Park, on International Pillow Fight Day, according to Bracken. In that whole time, the city never once authorized Newmindspace’s applications, and Bracken says he has the rejection letters to prove it. “We applied for permits year after year,” he said. “I’ve framed a lot of the rejection letters.” The onetime pillow fight organizer claims he stopped filing for the applications altogether after a New York Police Department detective hounded both him and his family as a result of his illicit pillow parties, specifically because the investigator warned Bracken that the city would never sanction his plush brawls with a permit. “He tracked me down and harassed my family, and the detective told me in no uncertain terms that a permit will never be issued for this event,” Bracken said. However, state Senator Hoylman said he’s doubtful of the pillow fight planners’ claims of having done their due diligence. And while Hoylman admits to never having consulted the Parks Department about the issue or investigated Bracken’s claims, he does not recall the matter of pillow fight permits ever coming before Community Board 2 during his three terms as the board’s chairperson, which is standard procedure as part of the city’s permitting process. The Parks Department was only able to turn up one pillow fight permit application — in 2009, for Union Square Park — which was denied due to concerns over excessive damage to parks left in the wake of prior unpermitted pillow fights, in addition to the event being too large for Union Square Park to accommodate, according to an agency spokesperson.

March 31, 2016

FILE PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Pillow fighters flailed and whomped away at last year’s melee in Washington Square Park.

“Permits are required for any event in a park when more than 20 people are expected,” the spokesperson said. “This helps us protect park grounds and facilities, and ensures that other parkgoers’ safety and needs are also addressed.” The spokesperson added that, in years past, the agency “has issued multiple cease-and-desist letters” to the organizers due to the level of irreparable damage to the park left by the event. In addition, Parks and Hoylman noted, there is another event — for which a permit has been issued — already scheduled in Washington Square Park for April 2: a high school student event from noon to 3 p.m. According to the organizers, the pillow fight is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Regardless of the veracity of Bracken’s claims, Hoylman contends they remain entirely without merit. “I think their attitude that they’re not going to get the permit anyway, so why go through the process, is mistaken,” the senator said. “Just because there are some limitations and people want to consult with you, that doesn’t give you the right to just proceed without consideration of your neighbors.” Beyond that, however, Hoylman asserts that people deserve a say when it comes to how public events in their neighborhood are organized, and that allowing community board members to weigh in would assuage his constituents’ fears over a variety of pillow-related concerns. “They should hear from people who care about our open spaces — who might have an understanding of the varied plantings in the park — the playground users, including parents

of small children, and all of the stakeholders,” Hoylman said. “That’s the point of the community process, and for some individuals to think they’re above it, I find galling.” But Bracken said that the peoples’ right to a public pillow fight contest is protected under the First Amendment, which the city has routinely violated in denying the group its permits. “In our opinion, if they control the time and place of expression year after year, our First Amendment rights are being abridged,” he charged. Hoylman fired off the letter to Bracken and his partner Lori Kufner after his office received complaints from locals regarding past public pillow fights. According to Hoylman, the pillow fights can lead to the destruction of park property, not to mention a mess of leftover feathers. But a representative for Urban Playground Movement, Nikki Sparks, replied with her own letter rebuffing the senator’s call for the event’s cancelation. Sparks, who gave her title as “chief unicorn,” said that neither Urban Playground Movement nor Newmindspace own International Pillow Fight Day — that there are numerous pillow fights being promoted on Facebook in New York City alone on April 2, and that they are one of the few responsible stewards of the event. “Each year, there are at least a dozen Facebook events created for the NYC pillow fight before we ever create ours, totaling over 12,000 attending between them,” Sparks wrote. “It is guaranteed that the event would take place with or without us, on the first Saturday of April, every year. The only way there is a reasonable chance of the event being cleaned up is if

somebody takes ownership of it — which is why we continue to be involved year after year.” Toward that end, Sparks has reached into her own pocket to rent a truck and plans on coordinating upward of 100 volunteers to assist in the cleanup after the Washington Square Park pillow-palooza. The pillow fight is a charitable event, and leftover pillows in good condition will be donated to homeless shelters throughout the city. In addition, the organizers have set up a deal with Sleepy’s — the mattress professionals — where, for each $10 pillow purchased at the store, the retailer will donate $3 to Dare2B, a charity focused on educating homeless children, according to Sparks. But the senator even managed to find issue with what to many would seem the event’s one, universally redeeming quality. “I find that condescending that someone would take a used pillow that’s dirty and has been swung around outdoors for a few hours,” he said. “It rings hollow to me.” Tobi Bergman, the C.B. 2 chairperson, agreed that there are good reasons why permits are given out for these sort of large events. “When people get permits for special events in parks, they are agreeing to the conditions under which they can privatize the use of public space,” he said. “They are committing themselves to protecting the park and leaving it as they found it. They are protecting the safety of the event participants and the general public by coordinating with park officials and police. They are protecting the city from risk by purchasing insurance.” TheVillager.com

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Continued from p. 18

Brian Patrick O’Donoghue O’Donoghue was a reporter for The Villager from 1982-86, covering Adam Purple and his fight to save the Garden of Eden, squatters and drug crackdowns. He is now an associate professor of journalism at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. His current efforts figure in the Alaska Innocence Project’s bid to exonerate the “Fairbanks Four.”

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March 31, 2016

To The Editor: Re “Fox has his facts all wrong on Pier 57 project” (talking point, by Diana Taylor, March 3): My family and I are Chelsea residents and I am writing in support of Diana Taylor’s recent comments regarding Pier 57. We’re very excited about the upcoming plans for the pier. It’s great to see something finally happen with the unused structure that currently stands there offering no value to the neighborhood. We’re thrilled to see that the proposal currently calls for even more green space along the Hudson River, providing park users with an expansive area to relax and enjoy views of New York. I’m sure that my family will love the no- and low-cost programming and events to be offered throughout the warm months. We are especially excited for Anthony Bourdain’s food hall. As foodies, we love having new options in the neighborhood and think the idea of lots of stalls mixing local and international cuisines will help to develop a great neighborhood destination. Finally, attracting businesses like Google to expand their presence in the area will be a smart investment that benefits the West Side and Hudson River Park as a whole. Pier 57 is an exhilarating new model for the use of public space. While it’s disheartening to know that there are some detractors, I hope that the project moves forward in a timely manner and that everyone can enjoy the benefits of this high-potential, unused space.

A hearty thank you to our New York State officials for supporting the park with a request for $3.5 million in the governor’s 2016-17 budget. We are grateful to all of them for their much-needed advocacy: state Senators Brad Hoylman, Daniel Squadron and Adriano Espaillat and Assemblymembers Richard Gottfried Deborah Glick and Linda Rosenthal. Hudson River Park is the jewel of New York City’s waterfront. It provides us with salty air, blue sky, grass and ball fields, bike paths and dog runs. It hosts 17 million visits each year from local residents and tourists from all over. It’s hard to imagine life without the park — and yet its financial situation remains precarious. So the state’s funding will be put to good use on critical park infrastructure: security cameras, LED bulbs, repairs to pavers and docks — lots of different fixes to keep the park safe and beautiful. We owe thanks to our city officials, as well. Councilmembers Margaret Chin and Corey Johnson have historically supported park requests. Johnson deserves a special shout-out this year for the leadership gift he is making to our capital campaign to refurbish Chelsea Waterside Park. Borough President Gale Brewer’s role in the park’s development is strong and constant and has included financial support. We expect soon to see the restoration and repurposing of Pier 57 near W. 15th St. into a gorgeous rooftop park above an international food market to be developed by Anthony Bourdain. Community Board 4 worked hand in hand with the Trust to scrutinize and contribute to this plan. It’s gratifying that this important financial project was able to garner strong and consistent public support through its years of review. All of us who love and use Hudson River Park should recognize the hard work by so many people — not the least of which, the Hudson River Park Trust, which operates the park. Gregory Boroff Boroff is executive director, Friends of Hudson River Park

Greg Wasserman

Waterfront jewel To The Editor: Spring is in the air, and as Hudson River Park comes alive again, it’s a good time to acknowledge the many people in our state, our city and our community who make it possible.

E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager. com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published. TheVillager.com

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Firefighters engage in fisticuffs for a good cause SPORTS BY JACK BROWN

n Sat., March 26, at the classic venue of Webster Hall, the Garda Siochana Boxing Club of the Irish National Police Service engaged the Fire Department of New York’s Bravest Boxing Team in classic fisticuffs. The night of amateur boxing was billed the Easter Eve Uprising, in honor of the centennial of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland. The motto of Bravest Boxing is “We’ll fight anyone...anytime...anywhere as long as its for a good cause.” The worthy cause was “Building Homes for Heroes,” which raises money to provide homes for wounded war veterans. Mixed Martial Arts is coming to New York State. The forces of commerce have overcome the resistance of those, including Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who contend that society is already saturated with violence, and that there is no need to promote the human body as a lethal weapon where asphyxiation — “choking out” one’s opponent, or making him “go to sleep” — is a virtue. Yet, on March 22, the New York State Assembly voted to approve MMA by a vote of 113 to 25. Both MMA and boxing are in “the hurt business.” One distinction is that MMA is akin to combat while boxing — at least amateur boxing — is competition. MMA fancies disabling an opponent. Gloves are minimal, protection nonexistent. In amateur boxing headgear is used. Gloves provide protection for hands and body parts struck. MMA is similar to a street fight or a two-person barroom brawl. The end may come savage and swift. Injuries are grievous. Or a fight may go the distance, inflicting punishment on both combatants. On the other hand, the Easter Eve Uprising event at Webster Hall, as sanctioned by USA Boxing, was characterized by good sportsmanship and respect — respect for the opponent and, in a moment of silence, respect for brother and sister firefighters and police officers who made the ultimate sacrifice. These are courageous individuals with dangerous jobs. The bouts were three two-minute rounds. No one got hurt. This was an exhibition of boxing as a discipline. A way to learn how to handle yourself and gain confidence. A way to train and stay in condition and work off stress. The audience was enthusiastic and orderly. It was a good time for a good cause. TheVillager.com

PHOTOS BY GREGORY DE LA HABA

It was a night of good sportsmanship, as firefighters from New York and Ireland slapped hands in between slugging each other in the ring.

After the fifth bout, guest of honor former Marine Gunnery Sergeant Christopher Claude was presented with a check for $15,000 toward the purchase of a new home. The boxing itself was spirited. There were varying levels of skill, age and conditioning displayed. There was some gray hair. But no one as seasoned as Bernard Hopkins, the 51-year-old light heavyweight phenom. There were two categories: novice and open. Matches were made to be competitive and fair. Josiah Rivera of F.D.N.Y. Engine 82 was scheduled to fight but he has been doing so well in the New York Golden Gloves that he had to cancel. Most of the Garda boxers fight in the typical European style: straight up and coming at you. They are primarily arm punchers. If they only learned how to turn and get their bodies into a punch, they would hit with more power. One exception is Daniel Houlihan, who fought an exciting bout with Julio Padilla from Engine 46 in a 165-pound open bout. Houlihan displayed good lateral movement and fast hands. And he needed it. Padilla pursued him relentlessly. In the sixth bout of the card, Andrew Tanzi of Engine 33 showed ability and determination in a 165-pound

Most of the fighting firefighters from Ireland boxed with a straight-up style, right, meaning they sacrificed punching power.

novice fight against Garda stand-in Shawn Jansen of Champs B.C. However, it wasn’t until the eighth and final bout that the Bravest B.C. won a fight. Daniel Oleaga of Engine 258 didn’t leave it to the judges. He stopped Michael Duggan in the

second round of their novice heavyweight fight. Some of the judges’ decisions were questionable and unpopular with the crowd. Was it pristine pugilism? No, but that’s boxing. It was a good time for a good cause. March 31, 2016

March 31, 2016

TheVillager.com